Philosophy

The School of Architecture’s mission is founded in the faculty commitment to excellence in design and architecture at every level.

Faculty and students draw upon the current and evolving body of knowledge of architecture while seeking an understanding of the history of the profession, traditional building methods, materials, form, and organization.

We affirm the essential need to design environmentally responsible buildings that promote social integration and economic sustainability and support life comfortably without reliance upon extravagant use of land and energy which adversely affect our ecosystems. The faculty and students capitalize on new knowledge and technology while grasping the legacy of building and seeking to make new discoveries in the overlooked work of the past, including the documentation of buildings and landscapes which are modest, vernacular, traditional or vulnerable.

We acknowledge our responsibility to contribute to the world by making it more beautiful and to reveal beauty in its most humble circumstances. We recognize and demonstrate through the curriculum that most of the buildings architects design are fabric buildings – making the walls of the outdoor rooms of community in our neighborhoods, districts, towns, and cities – and that the instances of monuments are special opportunities to speak for and about culture. Furthermore, we affirm our responsibility, shared with allied professions, for the design of the plazas, parks, thoroughfares, bridges and roadways that link the community.

Sharing with our national colleagues the goal to build a better professional community, the School of Architecture itself seeks to be a model of that community. The basic model of the school as a family recognizes that students may be new to architecture but experienced in other areas, with individual character, insight, and the ability to make significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge. To extend this understanding to a larger world, we dedicate ourselves, through a clear engagement of principles of history, structure, material, and form in design, and by means of a responsible use of resources and technology to participate practically and empathetically in the life of other cultures, religions, ethnicity, and life experiences, so that we might emerge with the knowledge, and later, the wisdom we need to build a better world.